3.5 billion people live in severe
poverty, 2.4 billion people lack access to
basic sanitation and over 1 billion people lack access
to safe drinking water.... Each day in the developing world,
30,000 children die from mostly preventable and treatable causes such
as diarrhea, acute respiratory infections or malaria. [1]

In
the context of the worlds most wealthy countries, according to the
"World Vision responds to G20 Communiqué" [2]:

While
G20 leaders have been focused
on finding concrete solutions to economic challenges, almost 14,000
children in their own countries will have died, mostly from preventable
causes.

These
countries are now the 21st century’s economic powerhouses, with 87 per
cent of the world’s GDP, yet many
are still failing to address dire living conditions and lack of access
to health services in their communities.

The
World Health Organization Global
Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care (GIEESC) was
established in December 2005 as an international collaboration of
Ministries of Health, WHO country offices, local and international
organizations and academia. GIEESC is involved in reducing death and
disability from road traffic accidents, trauma, burns, falls, pregnancy
related complications, domestic violence, disasters and other surgical
conditions. The specific objectives are:

strengthen
capacity to deliver effective emergency surgical care at the first
referral level facility, working towards achieving the WHO Millennium
Development Goals

improve
the quality of care through
safe and appropriate use of emergency and essential surgical procedures
and linked equipment in resource limited healthcare facilities

strengthen
existing training and education programs in safety of essential
procedures in low and middle income
countries

Today, despite the formation of GIEESC in 2005, 5 Billion people across the globe
lack access to basic surgical services and advanced medical
technologies. Even after half a century of independence, “not
more than 20 percent of the population has any access to….. basic
surgical services like life saving caesarian section, or a life saving
repair of
typhoid perforation…” (National Human Development Report
2001). This situation can be improved only if there is adequate number
of rural surgeons in India whose surgery is affordable and available
near the homes of the patients. -- Realising the vital role of
rural surgeons in the nation’s health care, Dr. Gazeiry, MD., FRCS.,
the past Regional Director of W.H.O. East Mediterranean Region remarked
that rural surgery be made into a specialty.

The concept of rural surgery has been developed in India in the last
thirteen years to make modern surgical care accessible to the five
billion havenots of the developing world. Only one billion out the
total of six billion population of the world has any access to the type
of surgical
care seen in the hospital of Western Europe and America.
In India, out of the population of one billion as of
today, not more than 10% has any access to this type
of surgical care.-- Association of Rural
Surgeons in India. [3]